Certainly I've heard anecdotally of women being told that they should give up their jobs for men who need to be the breadwinners for their families, which of course ignores the fact that plenty of women are the main income earners, indeed sometimes the sole income earners, and that many families need two incomes now, and that men don't have any more rights to work than women, and lots of other stuff that makes my ears red.

Other women have been pulling out of work, or not going back to work after time off to care for children, because they can't afford the childcare costs. And of course those in part time or casual work are usually more vulnerable to cuts in hours, and women are more likely to be in those jobs than men.

This recession and unemployment in general is bad for both men and women. I heard on the radio that a quarter of all young people** are unemployed, and that's a tragedy. I just wish this Government would start doing something about it.

2 comments:

Haven't found that "25 percent of young people out of work" statistic. The latest figures show that among those young people, aged 15-24, who are in the labour market (and the majority of those in this age group are not, they're studying), the unemployment rate for the December quarter was 18.4 percent. Numbers unemployed increased markedly for those aged 15–19 years (up by 12,800 to reach 45,300) and those aged 20–24 years (up by 11,100 to reach 27,400). But for all Maori in the labour force, unemployment was really high too, around 15 percent - compared with under 5 percent for the group Stats call "European".